Date: 03/09/2013 Time: 11:17
All he needed was a song.
Viktor hummed along as he looked through playlist after playlist. A sprinkling of notes, a quick hop beat, no no, these would be fun for another duet but not a solo piece.
“Viktor!” Xiaomon whined from the bed. “I’m bored!”
Viktor didn’t pause from his careful thumbing on his phone as he spoke. “Well, I did invite you to come listen with me. It’s not my fault you decided to stay over there.” He had, repeatedly, over the past week that the Bureau of whatever (the absurd name neither agent could say without snorting partway through) was cleaning up this mess.
“Well…” Xiaomon paused. “Well, you won’t let me dance!”
“You can’t dance very well on four feet and on my lap, Xiaomon.” The very suggestion had gotten Yuuri laughing so hard he nearly dropped Pururumon onto the floor.
Xiaomon made a face, which only served to be the cutest pout Viktor had ever seen since Makkachin. It wasn’t intimidating in the slightest, which was a shame. It was probably meant to be terrifying. Oh well. “I can too!”
“You fell on your way up,” Viktor pointed out with a tiny smile. It really was like looking through a window in the back of a house, the longer Xiaomon spoke. Seeing him when skating was only easy and enjoyable, and not so much of his life it threatened his humanity, it was like a fond look back on the old days.
Not that he was old. At all. He had all gray hairs from birth that didn’t mean anything.
“I’m better now.” Xiaomon’s utter self-assuredness about this fact was endearing now, if he stayed like this much longer, well…
There had to be digimon obedience classes surely. Makkachin had needed very few, but Makkachin also couldn’t talk. So.
Viktor grinned all the wider and sat up, briefly abandoning his phone. (He saw the stubby tail wag and contained a laugh.) “Is that so?” He leaned forward, much like he did when Yuuri was about to do exactly what everyone was sure he couldn’t. “PRove it.”
And much like the Viktor of early competitions, Xiaomon sure did try. Yuuri walked into him trying to do just that, dancing on four paws and skidding about on Viktor’s bed. It had been his stomach at first, but Viktor had laughed too much it was actually quite unstable. Even the proud little pup had giggled at himself for a second there.
“I wondered what the noise was about.” Poromon’s disgruntled voice came from Yuuri’s shoulder. He was such a nasty, uptight little thing sometimes. Well no, not uptight. More, well-to-do, proper, unafraid. But at the same time, there was something feral lodged deep within his eyes, something prepared to die for whatever was needed, to do what was necessary.
In this light, it was easy to see what Yuuri had been afraid of, deep down in the end.
“I was hoping it’d be less… strange.”
“Not everyone has been reincarnated Poromon.” Yuuri’s quiet voice was quiet but not unwelcome. Or chastising. He was patting the pink ball of feathers much in the way Viktor had loved to tease Yurio (and still did when the boy seemed to be puffing up a bit too much), only his was much more genuine and gentle. It was absurd, in a sense. “He is a baby.”
“Am not,” Xiaomon barked, only proceeding to prove his point.
Poromon let out a grunt that was very much like a chirp. “I suppose.” He dragged out the last word like you would food from off of a skewer. “,But what about your own human here? He is… quite unruly.”
Viktor laughed outright. His family would never call him unruly to his face, merely strong willed and even somewhat selfish. Which were both fair claims. Not that anyone else here would either. Poromon was just being the exception to all of the rules wasn’t he? It was rather funny actually. “I suppose I must look like it. Is there a problem with that?”
Yuuri glanced at him, that familiar, nervous smile on his face. Was there something actually wrong, he wondered? He hoped he was supposed to be pushing the buttons on this poor bird. Otherwise he was offending someone for no reason.
The ball of feathers puffed up a moment. Then he shrank down, disgruntled. “I suppose not.”
Viktor beamed. “Wonderful!” He looked back at Yuuri, whose lips were twitching so hard they might be spasming. “What are you doing here, Yuuri? I thought you were going to out to lunch.” Since they’d been finally let free after the unstable barrier thing or whatever it was was resolved, takeshi and yuuko had offered to take him out and let their partners roam about in the Homeland their friends had never seen.
“We we’re,” Yuuri agreed. “Yuuko wanted me to get you, because Digimon need exercise as they get older. And also I had a thought. I wanted you to know it first, to hear what you thought.”
“Oh?” Viktor’s insides warmed as they always did now, whenever Yuuri turned to him for his opinions, his feelings, his fears. Even the sorrowful negative ones, the wild ones that set the heart aflame and led it towards stupid and terrible decisions. Love, he realized, had its place. And its place was well earned with him. “What is it?”
Yuuri pulled Poromon into his hands. The Digimon did not even twitch until he was down. Then he settled to stare at Viktor with the intensity that Viktor did know well and envied at times when it was directed away from him. Yuuri inhaled slowly, and let out a shaky, embarrassed exhale.
“I have… ideas for this season.”
Viktor put his electronics away at once, the coach that he had been painstakingly building in him one step at a time coming to the front. He wished for his jacket, for the distance. He settled for Xiaomon sitting in his lap with confusion wrote into his adorable features.
“You have.” Not a question. Of course not.
Yuuri nodded. “At first, I thought it was going to be fear. Or grief.” Because, Viktor knew, that had been all Yuuri was feeling beneath his flashes of cheer and his attempts to cheer on them all over their partners, trying to help them.
“I think I almost settled on acceptance.”
There was nothing to do but move forward with what you had and what you could do with it. You could not change the world around you without accepting yourself.
“But.” Yuuri smiled and it was as beautiful as his face in concentration, in the rhythm of what was, what could be and would be. “I have a better idea. And I need your help choosing the music.”
Viktor smiled himself now, the warmth inside of him curling into flames. “Of course, Yuuri. I’m your coach. Of course I’ll help you.”
“After lunch,” Yuuri prompted a second later.
Viktor grinned. “Of course.” After all he was being allowed to intrude on something sacred, something private. The least he was going to do was enjoy this.
Xiaomon let out a groan. “Do you mean we gotta listen to more boring music now?”
All of them laughed, even Poromon.
I guess this means it’s time for a press conference, Viktor mused.
After it couldn’t do for his husband to one up him right?
“Unless you have a better idea,” Viktor offered. And the response he got was a mischief filled grin.
“I’ve got just the thing.”
This van ride was much more cheerful than the last. It was also more crowded but Maki could live with that. It was a discordant noise of happy people (and Digimon) chattering and getting ready for something fun, normal, doable. They were sounds she had assumed she would never have lived through, whether her plan had worked or not.
Well, she thought wryly as she started the car. Almost everyone is happy.
She could feel the eyes on her, impatient, tired, furious, and still kind after all of these years. She didn’t know how he could stay that way but then again he was also dead. And that kept you the same way for all eternity. It was the halting of people in one state, their last state.
“I know you’re there,” she said, matter of fact and like her voice wasn’t going to tremble and fall apart at the seams. “I’ve always known, Daigo.”
“You haven’t.” There was a quiet sound from the other, like a visibly heard pout. “You would have said something.”
“You aren’t a reliable source on what I would or wouldn’t do, Daigo.” The words were harsher than she anticipated, coming out of her mouth with the same sternness from their time as coworkers. She felt him flinch about it. Still, she pressed on.
“As far as I knew, you weren’t coming back to life, even if it was possible.” She kept her voice steady, calm. The red faded behind her eyes as she breathed out and Meiko slid in. Her eyes flickered and widened at the sight of Daigo and just as quickly, she looked away.
Maki watched him recoil as if she had been punched. The guilt rose in his eyes like a wave of water and Maki felt the glimmers of pity in her hands.
Then Makiko hopped in on the other side and looked right at her father. Their identical eyes met and flashed in the same knowing, wonderful, agonizing way. After a moment the little girl smiled and turned away, babbling to Viktor and then to Maki herself about how she wanted to show her how good she was at skating now. And Daigo faded back, a bad habit of his, but he didn’t disappear, not yet. He sat and watched and listened, a churlish frown on his face.
He only disappeared when Taichi appeared, Agumon bouncing with hunger at his heels. “Room for one more?” He tried to smile and mean it and almost succeeded. He got points for that.
“I don’t know,” Maki began. “Meiko, is there room for him and his black hole?”
Meiko giggled. “I suppose we can try… if he changes out of his suit first.”
Taichi let out a sigh of relief. “Thank you.” And he was gone to change.
Meiko giggled again and Maki smiled faintly into the steering wheel.
There were all sorts of purgatory. Some seemed happier than others.
“Everything ready?”
“God, yes, hurry up!”
Poor Digimon were stuck staring at food that they couldn’t eat. Poor, poor things.
Yuuri sat in the center of the camera, Viktor’s hand on his knee. He was not smiling yet. He sat straight faced, Yuuko at his right, Takeshi above him, Yurio on Viktor’s other side. His expression was vaguely puzzled. Yuuri could not blame him. He was doing something that most people didn’t even try to do. It was a breach of ettiquite, he figured, but also a challenge. You only revealed your challenge to the public in a conference, not with your friends and family around you like a casual gathering. That was the biggest flub of them all. And on a single cell phone.
But still. They had changed this system, bucked it to hell. What was more trend for the masses to yell about.
“Okay, count down from three.” Taichi’s voice was full of mirth. “Three.”
There was a shuffle as Takeshi yanked Maki next to him.
“Two.”
A flash of purple at the edge of Yuuri’s vision.
“One.”
A tingling warmth from his knee as Pururumon flashed white and grew in his lap, full of feathers.
“We’re live.” Taichi’s voice started him away from his surprise. Viktor squeezed his hand.
Yuuri breathed and began.
“Good morning,” he said, voice steadier than he should have been. “You know me, likely. My name is Katsuki Yuuri. I wanted to tell you all—”
Another flash of purple followed by quicksilver.
“The theme of my skating program for this year. The theme is change.”
There was a girl at Taichi’s side, a sad knowing smile on her face. Yuuri nodded at her without losing time.
“Slow and sudden. Gradual and unprepared for. I… have experienced great change in my life, especially very recently. And I wanted to share the importance of accepting that with all of you, if it would be all right.”
As he spoke, the little girl faded away.
Until next time. He would save her then, or absolve her. Anything he could really. Because she had no part in this, she gained nothing from this, nothing for the good of her world would come from this.
It would only be right to do the same.
After fifteen minutes the livestream ended and the group settled around the too large table to eat. There were a couple extra places with no food, but nobody minded that they weren’t filled.
They were still here, in these changing times.
Yuuri managed to look at a photo of Phichit and his tiny partner and smile, meaning it from his heart.
It did help to watch the flood of feedback, at least until Maki snatched his phone and passed it to someone who wouldn’t look at it or let him close.
Yuuri responded with an attempt to strike her with soy sauce before he could quite control his hands.
It missed and hit Yurio instead.
Chaos ensued.